Fecal Microbiota Transplant: A Literature Review

Fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) is a therapy used to treat antibiotic-associated Clostridium difficile. In recent years there has been a marked increase in the number of patient with recurrent C. difficile infections or CDIs, presumably due to the increase in antibiotic use by the population. Treatment for an initial C. difficile infection is antibiotics. For mild to moderate infections the antibiotic metronidazole also known by the brand name Flagyl is widely used, though it is not FDA approved to treat C. difficile infection. Taken multiple times a day by mouth metronidazole is effective in the treatment of a mild infection. For more severe infections vancomycin is used as treatment, vancomycin can be given by mouth or intravenously. Vancomycin is sometimes given in conjunction with metronidazole on an outpatient bases …show more content…
Even still there are some persistent and/or recurrent infections that require broad spectrum antibiotics such as fluoroquinolones. The premise of the article focuses on FMT to treat C. difficile infections after multiple failures on conventional treatments.
To fully understand FMT it was important for me to have a complete understanding of the infection it treats. Clostridium difficile is bacteria that can cause symptoms from mild to moderate diarrhea, to a more severe and life-threatening inflammation of the colon called colitis. Persistent infections can result in malabsorption of nutrients from the colon which leads to dehydration, weight loss, and malnutrition due to sever inflammation of the colon. Surgical resection of a patient’s colon can follow as a result of prolonged infections. FMT according to the article is meant to be an intervention preferably prior to the moderate to severe cases. We know that C. difficile mainly occurs in people recently on antibiotics, mainly for an unrelated infection. C. difficile is